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Monday, February 7, 2011

Great Deals!

So in my quest to start eliminating debt, I've started clipping coupons and checking out variousblogs for ideas on how to save money. I thought I would just share a couple of the gems I've come across in the last few days.

First of all, if you go to P&G's Facebook page and "like" their page, then click on the Special Offer tab at the top, you can sign up to receive a coupon booklet for over $110 in coupons for P&G products. P&G products include Bounce, Charmin, Pringles, Crest, Pampers and Luvs, to name a few, so I'm pretty excited for my booklet to come in the mail. Surely there will be a few coupons that I'm going to use in there, right? Apparently the website is running a little slow because of all of the interest in the offer, but if you persevere, you should be able to sign up eventually. I actually got through with no problem, and after I signed up as a member for P&G and filled in my address, they said my booklet would come in 5-10 days. I'll let you all know what I end up with.

My second find in the last week (and I am SUPER!!!! excited about this one) is Amazon Mom. If you click the link, it will direct you to the page that explains the whole process, but let me sum it up a little for you here. Basically, you sign up for this completely free program. (And I went over the whole thing with a fine tooth comb - it is 100% free.) You get three free months of Amazon Prime (which means that you get free two day shipping). For every $25 you spend at one time in the Baby Store, your free membership in Amazon Prime is extended for another month. THEN, you sign up for Subscribe and Save (which means that you are just setting up what you've ordered to be delivered to you on an ongoing schedule) and you will save 30% on whatever you've ordered. If you decide you don't want to do the Subscribe and Save bit anymore, you can unsubsribe at any time at no penalty. At that point you will only save 15% on what you order because of your Amazon Mom membership. So as long as you spend more than $25 a month (and that's $25 before your discount), your free two day shipping will continue for a whole year.

So here's what I'm ordering: diapers. Gonna need 'em, right? With this fabulous deal, I'm able to get a box of 204 Luvs diapers for only $24.18. After tax, $26.16, which comes out to about 13 cents a diaper. Before I found this deal, I was buying a box of 96 diapers for $15.97 which is almost 17 cents a diaper. Biiiiig difference. I'm pretty sure that 204 diapers isn't going to cover a whole month, but it should come pretty close, and if I buy a box of 96 at Wal-mart, it should last me several months with only having to take some out to supplement the big box from Amazon. Granted, the amount of diapers I get will go down when Raegan goes up to a size four, but it would go down in the box I would get from Wal-mart too, so I anticipate this continuing to be a money saver. I priced Diaper Genie refills, another necessity in our house, and we would save money by ordering a three pack through Amazon with the 30% discount, so I'm going to start that subscription for awhile also. If you don't use disposable diapers, I saw that Amazon also sells all forms of cloth diapers. I don't know enough about cloth diapering to know if you are saving any money by going this route, but it wouldn't hurt to check it out, right?

I feel kind of silly to say this, but you cannot imagine how freakin' excited I am for my huge box of diapers to show up on Wednesday. :)

In other savings news, I took some advice from Penny Pinchin' Mom before I went grocery shopping. I looked at the sale ad for Dillons (and compared them to what I knew some of those items cost at Walmart - Walmart is usually cheaper, but not always with a good sale!), organized my coupons, and figured out what I already had in my cupboards and freezer. With a little planning around what was on sale this week, I managed to get away with only spending $76 on groceries (plus paper towels, shampoo and a couple other non-food items). Normally I spend about $100-$125 a week, so this was pretty big. I know we won't be able to save that much on groceries every week, but it was a nice start to keep me motivated.

So to anyone reading this blog: What websites do you read with advice for saving money? Or what strategies do you use that have worked? Leave me a comment and let me know!

I don't follow any blogs for couponing ideas. I just make sure I get the Sunday paper so I have all the coupons and I look at the weekly ads for Dillon's and Walgreen's and I line up all my coupons so I get the best deals that way. The key is to use your coupons along with items that are on sale. Sometimes you will be buying things that you wouldn't normally try, or you will buy different brands because the brand is on sale and you have coupons. Does that make sense?

Don't forget to load digital coupons to your Dillon's card. You can use a digi cpon along with a paper cpon for the same item. You can also you a store coupon along with a manufacturers coupon. Same with Walgreen's :)

My mother in law is saving the coupons from the Sunday paper for me. Last week's coupons were awful - I did't take a single one of them, but she did give me some of those "personalized" Dillons coupons that she got in the mail that she wasn't going to use. I love those - we always get a free carton of eggs and chips, along with some good money off coupons.

Oh, and the only catch to the doubling of coupons at Dillon's is that they won't double those personalized coupons that they send me in the mail. I was a little bummed when I found that out! And Olivia, are you sure about being able to use a paper coupon and a digital coupon? I thought I read somewhere that you couldn't use both together? Or maybe I'm thinking that I can't use a coupon specifically for just Dillon's along with a digi coupon???